“I would think that tobacco-control people would be celebrating. That’s more rapid (a drop) than would be predicted. With increasing use of e-cigarettes, and decreasing use of tobacco, it totally makes sense that there has been substitution going on,” says Mark Tyndall, executive director of the B.C. Centre for Disease Control.

David Sweanor, an Ottawa lawyer and member of the anti-smoking movement, supports e-cigs and believes that the trend has been inspired by consumers and entrepreneurs, not by officials.

“It is being done despite the anti-smoking establishment,” said Sweanor. “It isn’t that governments have been encouraging this … quite the opposite. Governments have been doing things to get in the way.”